Toshakhana Justice

Experts believe political issues should be resolved in the parliament and not at any other forum

Most parliamentarians believe that involving the courts in political matters with the aim of getting one politician or another disqualified is a wrong trend which needs to be stopped. Politicians should resolve political matters politically, and shouldn’t allow state institutions to step in to sort those matters, they say.

This emerged when Bol News spoke to a number of parliamentarians, seeking their views on the recent disqualification of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) Chairman, Imran Khan, by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in the Toshakhana reference.

Mr Khan was disqualified in a unanimous ruling by a four-member bench of ECP on 21 October for “misleading” concerned officials about the gifts he had received from foreign dignitaries during his tenure as the prime minister.

Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah, a member of National Assembly from the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), told Bol News that taking political matters to the courts with the aim of getting unfriendly politicians disqualified is “terrible”.

Such an approach gives the institutions the leeway to treat each figure the way they think fit instead of following the law in letter and spirit, he said, quoting as an example the politicians who were disqualified under Constitutional articles 62 and 63.

“One person (Nawaz Sharif) was disqualified for life, while another (Imran Khan) was disqualified for just one term. Such discrimination should not be allowed,” he said. “However, disqualification on the same grounds was wrong then, and it is wrong now, irrespective of who is being disqualified.”

He said that parliamentarians need to find a solution to issues like this, something which they haven’t been able to focus on so far. As an example, he says that when Imran Khan was in power, he thought of himself as a superman and considered it below his status to interact with elected members of the opposition.

Another parliamentarian, Maulana Muhammad Jamalud Din of Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal Pakistan (MMAP), also considered it to be a bad trend, and said that whoever initiated such a process was the real culprit and should be held responsible.

Asked who that “real culprit” would be, he smiled and asked a counter-question, “don’t you know who it might be?”

Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), while responding to the query, said that he had been raising this issue at the relevant forums for the past 15 to 20 years. “It is an established tradition now that politicians don’t resolve political matters within themselves, and then blame certain institutions when they end up in a hard place,” he said.

He recommended that politicians should “sit together and evolve a strategy to resolve contentious issues as part of the political process. That alone can help us improve the situation that we are facing at the moment. If politicians are not able to do that, blaming this institution or that for their troubles will get them nowhere.”

Shahida Akhtar Ali, a legislator of MMAP, while responding to the query said that unfortunately, the way things have evolved in Pakistan, it has become a tradition that courts get involved in political matters either directly or when egged by another player.

“I believe there are shortcomings in our political system which restrict politicians from resolving political issues. In the past the courts have been stating that politicians should take political matters to the parliament instead of bringing them to the courts, but that hasn’t happened,” she said.

She was of the view that there is an urgent need to strengthen the parliament, and this can only happen when the roles of both the treasury and the opposition are accepted and respected in a true democratic spirit.

Under the Constitution, the role of the judiciary is to interpret the law when required, she said. “But when we flood them with political cases, we not only waste the court’s time, we also let other factors come into play. Note, for example, the issue of contrasting judgments issued in cases of the same nature.”

Former Prime Minister, Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, when approached by Bol News, declined to comment, saying the matter was sub-judice.